A Dime a Dozen (43 page)

“Who is Princess Tatiana?” I asked.

“Not who,
what
,” Danny said. “It’s a sapphire. One of the biggest ever found. Until now.”

Of course! Zeb didn’t leave town with a woman way back then. He left town with a big, valuable stone. He took it to a gem dealer, sold it, and came home with the profits. Princess Tatiana was a
sapphire
, not a person.

“Is that how long you’ve been stealing from this mine, Zeb? Since you were a young man?”

“When I was a young man, this was a working mica mine. They didn’t even care about the sapphires back then.”

“The story goes that Zeb used that big, ugly rock as a doorstop in his house for about ten years,” Danny said, chipping away. “Then one day he realized what he might have, so he took it to a dealer and sold it for a small fortune.”

“What happened between then and now, Zeb?”

He exhaled slowly, and though I knew he must’ve been in considerable pain, he seemed willing to talk.

“I just wanted to buy the mine,” he said. “I tried to come by things legitimately. I’ve bought property all over this town, looking for gems. But there’s never been any vein like this one, and Lowell wouldn’t sell it to me.”

“So you tunneled your way in from the other side of the mountain?”

“That tunnel worked fine for years. But I’m getting older. I thought there was an easier way. When I found out Lowell was donating land to Su Casa, I made sure we built right where we did. I gave myself a new entrance, straight from my own office. What could be simpler? Or so I thought, until my gem dealer came down here from New York and tried to blackmail his way into my source.”

“Your gem dealer?” I asked, thinking of the man who was stabbed behind the church on Sunday night.

“That’s me!” Danny said loudly, taking an extra big swing at the ceiling. As the pick connected with the dirt, an entire chunk came flying down and almost knocked him off the ladder.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “Danny, you’re a gem dealer? What about Detroit and your job as an accountant?”

“What about your parents’ accident?” Trinksie added.

He paused in his work and looked at us.

“People are so gullible,” he said. “Give ’em a good sob story, and they’ll believe anything.”

“Danny’s from New York,” Zeb said. “Everything he’s said or done since he got here has been a lie. Now he’s gonna kill us all, just the way he killed Morales and just the way he killed Roy.”

“Roy?”

“His old business partner. The man who got stabbed Sunday night? Roy came here looking for a sweet deal himself, but nobody blackmails the blackmailer. Danny simply did him in.”

“Danny stabbed that man in the parking lot?” Trinksie asked angrily. “Danny,
you’re
the one Snake was trying to protect?”

“Snake is the best flunky I ever found,” Danny said. “That kid would do almost anything to become a member of the club.” He laughed, his voice echoing against the rock. “A club. Best idea I ever had.”

I took a deep breath in the dusty air, trying to clear my mind.

“Wait a minute,” I said to Zeb. “How could Danny have killed Enrique Morales? Danny wasn’t even living here back then.”

Danny laughed.

“I was visiting,” he said. “I came here to call on my buddy Zeb, to see where he was getting such sweet stones. I knew there was something funny about his situation, but I never guessed he was building himself a secret entrance to somebody else’s mine.”

“Danny only stayed in town a few days that time,” Zeb explained. “And he kept a very low profile while he was here—he was either in the mine or at my house. I don’t think anyone else ever saw him. When Enrique discovered the hidden door, Danny tricked me into luring him down here, and then he killed him.”

“Hey,” Danny said, swinging his pick. “It’s a tough job, but somebody had to do it.”

“You never said you were going to
kill
him,” Zeb said. “I just thought you would rough him up a bit. Convince him to keep his mouth shut.”

“I don’t understand,” Trinksie said. “Why did you put Enrique’s body in the apples?”

Danny gave a sharp laugh.

“That was just supposed to be temporary,” Zeb said. “We hid the body there ’cause we needed to stash it somewhere in a hurry. We weren’t sure if Enrique had told anyone about the mine, so we couldn’t leave the body down here, in case someone came looking.”

“We were gonna come back and get the body out of the apples that night, after dark,” Danny continued, “maybe throw it in the lake or bury it in the woods. But by then, the apple bin was gone. The truck had come and picked it up, and that migrant had already been sealed tight in the apple storage, with no way to get him out until springtime.”

“So the day that the room was unsealed,” I said, “Danny was supposed to be driving the forklift, and the bin of apples you came to pick up in your truck was the bin with the body in it?”

“If all had gone according to plan,” Zeb said. “Though we knew it might be a bit tricky.”

Trinksie shifted her weight, causing the duct tape to cut into my side.

“What about that letter from New York?” I asked. “How did Roy’s fingerprints get on it?”

I wrote that letter and sent it to Roy,” Danny snapped. “He was just supposed to put it in an envelope and mail it back down to Luisa. But the idiot had to go and read it first. That got him curious enough to eventually come down here and see what was going on for himself.”

Trinksie shook her head.

“I still don’t get it,” she said. “Danny, why did you move here and take a job on the farm? Why did you pretend to be someone that you’re not?”

He paused in his work to consider her question.

“I haven’t seen a vein this rich with sapphires in my entire life,” he said. “I knew a job on the orchard would give me a good cover for sapphire mining—plus it would give me the chance to get that migrant’s body out of the apple storage before anyone else saw it.”

“Why did it matter, after all that time?” I asked.

“Because of how he died!” Danny said. “The chemicals, the mica. We knew if they did an autopsy, somebody would put two and two together eventually.”

“But then why the position with Go the Distance?” I asked. “The whole orchard liaison thing?”

“Because Karen Weatherby is set to inherit this entire place. Duh. Maybe Tinsdale wouldn’t sell this property to Zeb, but I was gonna give it my best shot to marry into it. The old guy was supposed to die long before now.”

I thought of Karen and Pete and Lowell’s will, and I realized that Danny had no real interest in Karen. He only wanted her for her inheritance—an inheritance she didn’t even know she wasn’t going to get! I had let myself get sidetracked by their issues. They had nothing to do with any of this.

The real issue was that Danny Stanford was a sociopath, willing to manipulate, lie, steal, and kill just to get what he wanted.

“You said it couldn’t be done,” Danny cried exuberantly. He swung the pick with a mighty blow, and then we all watched as the big rock broke loose from the ceiling. Like a giant pendulum, it hung there for a moment, and then it came completely free and crashed to the ground with a deep, heavy thud.

I braced myself for what would come next, closing my eyes and bending my head. The roof held, however, and after a moment, Danny cheered with glee.

“I told you, Zeb!” he said, tossing the pick. “I told you it would hold!”

He ran to the big bucket of soaking gemstones and dumped the liquid out onto the ground. Then he started going around the room and collecting sapphires from various piles, throwing them all into the bucket. Apparently, if this was the last looting of the mine, he was going to do a thorough job of it.

Finally, he took off into the cave, laughing.

“Where is he going?” I asked Zeb.

“He’s probably collecting the stones from all of the buckets,” Zeb replied.

“Is he gone?” a voice asked from the top of the stairs.

“Snake?” Trinksie whispered. “Is that you?”

“I thought Snake was in jail!” I said.

“I bailed him out this morning,” Trinksie replied.

We heard the door open, and a moment later Snake appeared at the bottom of the stairs.

“I-I been listening through the hole in the door,” he said softly. “Is he gone now?”

“Snake!” I whispered sharply. “Grab that knife by the wall and come cut us loose!”

He did as I directed, grabbing Zeb’s pocketknife that Danny had confiscated, running over to us, and quickly slicing through our bonds. My hands were numb, and I flexed my fingers in front of me as I ran for the pick that Danny had tossed to the wall. Snake helped Trinksie to her feet, and then she tended to Zeb.

“All right, folks!” Danny cried, coming into the room with two bucket handles in each hand. “It won’t be long now.”

When he entered the room, he hesitated, momentarily surprised when he saw we weren’t still taped together on the ground. He recovered quickly, however, dropping the buckets and reaching for his gun.

Just as quickly, I swung back the pickax to throw at him, but then Snake decided to be brave and make a run at Danny. With Snake in the way, I had to hold off from throwing the sharp tool. In an instant, Danny gained the upper hand.

“Stop!” Danny cried, pointing the gun as the boy froze in front of him. Still looking at Snake, Danny said, “Callie, put the pickax down and come back over with the rest.”

Reluctantly, I dropped the tool into the mud and rejoined the group.

“Snake, buddy,” Danny said, forcing a smile. “I’m so glad you’re here. I’ve got some heavy things I could use your help with.”

“I-I’m not your buddy,” Snake said loudly. “You tricked me.”

“Tricked you?” Danny asked. “Tricked you how? You finally made it, dude. You’re in the clubhouse!”

“Th-this isn’t a clubhouse,” Snake said. “You tricked me.”

Danny motioned with the gun for Snake to back up, and then he herded us all tightly together against the wall.

Gun still pointed at us, Danny walked over to the gigantic sapphire on the ground and looked down at, as if he were trying to decide how to handle it by himself. Finally, he knelt down and in one quick motion hoisted it onto his shoulder with a groan.

“All right, then,” Danny said, still pointing the gun at us, straightening his legs with the weight. “I’ve got four people and five bullets. Who wants to die first?”

Smiling, he pointed the gun at me. Before he could squeeze the trigger, however, I leaped toward him in a low tackle, hoping to take him down at the knees before he could get off a clean shot. Unfortunately, he lost his grip on the big rock, and it fell, breaking my force and scraping my shoulder as I hit the ground.

“Uh-oh!” Danny cried, stepping back out of my reach. “Looks like we have ourselves a hero here. Don’t you know, girl? Heroes are the first to go.”

From the ground, I looked up into the barrel of his pistol as he cocked it with his thumb. He was going to shoot me, and there was nothing I could do about it.

“Wait!” I said, trying to stand, my mind racing. “If you shoot me right here, I’ll get blood all over your stones.”

He laughed.

“Blood from a stone,” he said. “Get it?”

He reached down and grabbed my arm, lifting me the rest of the way up, spinning me around, and pinning my arm behind my back. It really hurt, but I remained silent, hoping that by fighting him I could distract him long enough for the others to get away.

Unfortunately, I felt the cold steel of the gun barrel against my temple. He had me in a tight armlock, with no way for me to get out.

Before he could squeeze the trigger, however, a clump of dirt fell onto his forehead. Distracted, he looked up, and I seized the moment to stomp on his instep and then twist around and free my arm. More dirt fell, and Trinksie screamed. I ran toward her just as the roof caved in, dirt and mud crashing down on top of Danny, the booming thunk of tons of earth echoing throughout the mine. As if in slow motion, I reached my arms out and swept Snake and Trinksie forward, throwing them toward the passageway. The three of us landed on the ground, and clutched each other tightly, covered our faces, coughing and gagging through the dust. When things cleared somewhat, we looked back to see that the entire chamber had caved in. Instead of a dirt ceiling, now the dirt formed a giant mound on the ground and above it was only wide-open blue sky.

Danny and Zeb were no more.

Fifty

The hospital room was dark, the shades drawn. I tapped lightly on the door and walked in to find Lowell Tinsdale awake and staring at the ceiling.

“Lowell?” I said softly, stepping toward the bed.

He looked over at me and then turned away. I walked over to the bed anyway and pulled up a chair and sat beside him.

There were wires and tubes everywhere, particularly the ever-present oxygen tube that ran under his nose. One of his machines made a steady whoosh, in and out, and I focused on the sound of that as I sat and waited patiently for him to acknowledge that I was there.

“What do you want?” he said finally, turning toward me. “I told the nurse no visitors.”